1. Field of the Invention.
The present invention relates to methods and systems for producing off-shore deep-water oil and gas wells where gas pipelines or other gas handling facilities are unavailable.
2. Description of the Prior Art.
In undeveloped off-shore deep-water areas, there are generally no gas production pipelines or processing facilities available. As a result, the developer of such areas must either pay the high cost of building pipelines to far away existing gas and oil processing facilities or build expensive floating processing and off-loading facilities for oil and gas products.
Without pipeline infrastructure, the handling of natural gas off-shore is especially difficult because it must be converted to a liquid form and transported by tanker vessel or the like. The alternatives available are to convert the natural gas to liquefied natural gas, to methanol or to a liquid hydrocarbon mixture using the Fischer-Tropsch process. All of these natural gas liquification methods involve the construction of expensive and complex off-shore processing facilities.
Processing facilities known as "early production systems" have heretofore been utilized to produce smaller off-shore deep-water fields as well as to place wells in large fields on production whereby operating parameter data can be developed for use in designing large scale pipeline and processing facilities. However, such early production systems have heretofore been very expensive and often cost more money to operate than they produce. In addition, most early production systems currently in use flare the natural gas rather than processing it which is not permitted in the Gulf of Mexico and other off-shore deep-water areas.
Thus, there is a need for a simple and relatively inexpensive production system whereby natural gas can be produced in an inexpensive environmentally safe manner and the oil or oil and water produced with the natural gas can be separated and transported to processing facilities by way of tanker vessels or the like.